Fix
by LankySundown
Summary: Fix? There was nothing left to fix. Katniss realizes she is broken, and there's only one other person in District 12 who can relate. Spoilers through Mockingjay, rating for later chapters.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own the Hunger Games. That'd be Suzanne Collins.

This story is set post-Mockigjay, with the epilogue being non-existant. Without further adieu, I give you...

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Fix.

There was nothing to fix. Even when Peeta held her each night, there was no escaping it. It? What was _it_? The nightmares? She was used to those. So was it the still-present threat that her life could be taken from her at any moment? No, she didn't even bother worrying about her own life anymore. Katniss Everdeen was eighteen years old, though she felt at least forty after everything she'd lived through, and she didn't give a rat's ass about her life. Not with everything she'd been through. She'd been able to endure it all, sure, survive it; but to say she was handling things would be laughable. She tried, she really did, but not for herself. There were two things that haunted Katniss Everdeen these days, and neither of them had to do with herself. Not really.

First, every night and sometimes in her waking moments, she saw a blonde braid hanging loosely down a back, pointing directly to an untucked shirt that looked exactly like a duck's tail. Before she ever had a chance to reach out and touch the face, it always burst into flame.

Prim.

She couldn't call it a nightmare either; she wouldn't let herself. Not when she'd seen it. She'd been yards, only yards away from her baby sister, the one she risked everything, _everything_ to protect, and now…

Katniss had nothing to live for. She was empty. Hollow. And Peeta couldn't help her this time. No matter how much she wanted him to, however much he tried, he just _couldn't_. It was no one's fault, though Katniss couldn't help but blame herself. He'd gotten better, hadn't he, stopped trying to kill her, been brought back around to the Peeta she'd loved. He was still here, just like tonight, with his big arms around her, pulling her into his stout, stocky, Peeta body, breathing his sweet scent, reminiscent of freshly baked bread, onto Katniss's neck. He was still here, but Katniss continued to use the word "love" in past tense.

Sometimes she slipped up. She'd say something to Peeta about how she'd loved him, past tense, when she was trying to tell him how much she still cared about him and he'd get that look in his eyes. A little confused, a little like a wounded animal. It was all Katniss could do not to turn away and let the sob waiting at the back of her throat rip out of her body at that look. Because she knew she was letting him down. She was always letting him down, that somehow, after everything that had taken place, her unrequiting self wasn't enough anymore. Because he wasn't the same unconditional Peeta. No, sometimes, when she'd slip up like that, she'd see a glimmer of something else in his eyes, or in his form, his shift of stance. And it terrified her.

That was the second thing. The glimpses she'd been getting of the Peeta from the hijacking. She felt it was her duty to take it without objection, to stay, to try and combat it with the unconditional love Peeta had once given her. But she wasn't good at that kind of stuff. That was his thing. Caring, that was Peeta. Not that she didn't care. Because if there was one person left in this world she cared about, it was Peeta Mellark.

So, nighttimes, lying wrapped in his arms, she had her nightmares. They made her shake and sweat and shiver and mumble and scream. Usually she woke Peeta, just like before, and he'd whisper calming things in her ear, turn her body gently to face him, kiss her forehead and wipe the sweaty tendrils of hair from clinging to her face.

"Shh, it's alright, Katniss. I've got you. I'm here."

After the first arena, it had been enough. But that was because she'd usually dreamed about losing him. Now she was plagued by any number of things; by the memories of losing Prim, of the Games, of the Quell, of losing Cinna and Finnick and Boggs and any other person she'd ever cared for. She'd dream and scream, and sometimes Peeta wouldn't wake up. He'd pull her closer, like a reflex, with a crushing force like he was trying to break her. His eyebrows would scrunch together in the same way that Hijacked Peeta's did. And it wasn't that Katniss was scared for her life, but seeing this, this loving part of Peeta forever taken away from her, this is what scared her more than anything. Because if they'd been able to take away this source of unconditional love, of joy, of hope from the world, what else could fix the broken pieces?

Nothing. There was nothing.

So tonight, she lay in bed waiting for his arms to loosen their grip. After what seemed like half the night and certainly part of the next morning, Katniss felt the iron grip subside, and quietly wormed her way out of his grasp; made her way to the kitchen. She sank into a whitewashed kitchen chair.

Here she was. Katniss Everdeen. Eighteen years old. She had once loved this boy with too much of herself without so much as her own awareness, and she had singlehandedly led to his destruction. She had been by his side as the nightmarish Peeta gave way to a ghost of his former self, and though it hurt her like crazy, there was something else to it. She was not afraid of her own death; she barely felt alive as it was. What she was was responsible. Entirely, inescapably responsible. She was the reason for making him lose himself. And maybe now, she started to think, maybe now she was ruining everything again. Maybe she was trying too hard to force this. Her staying was causing him to relapse. Because, maybe she just stayed with Peeta for herself. Her presence was making him be like _that_ again. Maybe he didn't want her anymore, didn't want any of it, couldn't handle it without driving himself insane. Maybe she was the one breaking him again.

She couldn't bear the thought of causing this boy any more hurt.

_But what about what you need, Katniss?_ A small voice in the back of her head asked her. She almost began to answer, that she needed Peeta, she needed someone to protect, someone who would chase away the demons in the night but –

_ What about me?_ She stopped herself, growling back in response, ripping one of Peeta's stickybuns into shreds before her. _This isn't about me anymore._ Because it wasn't. Looking at the buns on the table in front of her made her sure of it. Because he'd forgotten, he'd forgotten how he used to make her cheese rolls and they were her favorite. She didn't have the heart to remind him, just took it as a part of her penitence. He'd forgotten, and it almost broke her heart. _Almost, _she reminded herself. _Because that could only happen if I still loved him. And I can't._

Katniss, you see, was trying to survive in a world of unfeeling in recent days. Numbness. She was finding it harder and harder to deal with losing Prim night after night, with Peeta being all but gone, of her direct hand in all of it, of her life being completely flipped upside down and shaken loose of anything that ever meant anything to her.

She couldn't be Peeta, and that was the one thing he needed from her right now. The one, final thing that her life demanded of her. And she couldn't do it.

She stood up with a jolt and strode to the front closet, pulled a leather jacket out of the depths and over her shoulders, taking a deep whiff of it. Shakily, she tried to convince herself of its still-earthy smell, the faint mix of spiciness and animals and something else she could never describe that was distinctly her father, trying to regain her confidence. But it only made her feel more sad.

_So this is how it is_, she thought. This was just how everything was. Everyone always left her, one way or another. Made some kind of grand exit from her life that left a hole. And now she was the one leaving. She was leaving Peeta. She'd come to the conclusion without even consciously doing so, but after recognizing it, it seemed like the only thing to do. She hated herself for it, but there it stood. She had to save him somehow, and this was her last-ditch effort. To cut him off from the poison in his life. There was no turning back now.

And so she walked with measured steps, body erect, out the front door, past the outskirts of the grassy, overgrown Victor Village. Broke into run. Towards the Seam, to her woods that laid beyond.

She didn't even bother to close the front door.

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AN: What do you think? This is my first attempt at a multiple-chapter fanfic, and I have a few ideas knocking around in my head for its future course of action, including, obviously, a lot of everyone's favorite drunk mentor :) I'd love any feedback you want to give me, and, of course, it will motivate me to write and update with more haste. Please review?


	2. Chapter 2

This was not the right plan. Being in the woods again, it was like she was walking in the past, the ghost of the former Gale following her through the trees, but when she turned back, she was alone. Gale was still alive, somewhere in District 2, probably in some high-up government position that applauded him trapping human beings to their deaths.

She had to stop thinking about that.

Because, really, she was happy for Gale. If she had the capacity to be happy about anything, that was. He was still one of the most important people in her life, even if he wasn't the same Gale anymore. The Games, the war, it had changed everyone. Katniss knew that. Good things were supposedly coming out of it, too, not that Katniss had any interest. The districts were still rebuilding. She and Peeta could hear the construction at work, the booms of the cranes in the daytime, the distant cacophony from choirs of hammers at work. But they never so much as looked out the window to watch. Maybe that was a part of their problem.

Katniss found her way to back to the hollow log she kept her bow in. Still there. She lifted it, feeling the thing practically hum in her hands. Closing her eyes and pulling, she took in the sensation, letting herself live entirely within it. _Some things cannot change, _she thought_, no matter how much the world wants them to._ Opening her eyes, she realized that her only wish was for more things to carry this kind of constancy.

Yeah, right.

Suddenly, she didn't feel like hunting anymore. Stashing her bow, she plunked down on a grassy clearing. Running her fingers through the lush, green life beneath her, she rashly ripped up a fistful of the leaves of grass. Slowly extracting the shards from between her fingers, her lips began forming words. It wasn't until she was halfway through the handful until she realized what she was doing. "Madge. Darius. Boggs… Leeg 1… Leeg 2… Mitchell, Jackson. Cinna. …The boy from District 1, Glimmer, Foxface, and Thresh… Mags… Wiress… Finnick…." She was listing off all of the people she'd killed. Not directly, maybe, but killed nonetheless. She ran out of grass before she ran out of names. Looking down, she nearly sickened at the knoll beneath her, rolling with grassy leaf after grassy leaf, just another name, another sacrifice, and for what? For Katniss to live? For the rebels to win? Because what did any of that even mean anymore? They were just rebuilding the districts they'd sought to liberate, and the way Katniss saw it, it hadn't seemed like much was changing. She still lived secluded from the rest of the district, in her Victor Village. People avoided her like she was the proverbial plague. She had one purpose left to serve, and she couldn't even do that correctly.

Katniss didn't know where she was going when she got up this time, just followed her feet wherever they were taking her. She noted landmarks: Out of the woods. Past the Seam. The circuitous route back to Victor Village. Up the front steps. Push open a door. Don't knock. Stand in doorway.

Haymitch's house.

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AN: Short chapter, I know. More soon! Review?


	3. Chapter 3

She hadn't seen the alcoholic bastard in months. But if her former mentor was good for one thing, it was knowing how to deaden any and all kinds of emotion. She walked into his house, which was hauntingly familiar as it was exactly like hers and Peeta's. This one was much dirtier though. Much darker. And it reeked of alcohol.

She made her way to where the hall split open between the kitchen and living room and, sparing a glance to the latter, found the TV flickering a lucid light over the rumpled couch, a low garble coming from the channel anchors commentating on the wonder and hope in the rebuilding of Panem. Or whatever they were calling it now.

Katniss turned in disgust to the kitchen, where she should have been even more disgusted at the pile of dishes attracting a lazy fly in the low beam of light leaking in through the window, the slew of empty bottles, some upright and some laid to rest on their sides, covering the counter. Disinterested, she turned in search of something that would stifle the rush of sensations she was suddenly starting to drown in, thoughts brought on by seeing that horrible message TV, feelings of self-repulsion at allowing herself to seek some escape… She opened the fridge, bending to look inside.

"Sweetheart."

At the familiar nickname, Katniss turns.

From her mentor's jumbled stance, knife in hand, rumpled workpants and trademark dress shirt horrendously wrinkled, she knows Haymitch wasn't expecting to see _her_ in his kitchen.

He's looking at her, eyes hard to read because of the alcohol apparent in his system, but the trace of a smile on his lips. _Probably a sarcastic one._ Katniss scoffs.

"Fancy seeing you here," he drawls, snatching a bottle containing some brown liquid off the counter before falling into a kitchen chair. Stabbing his knife into the table before him and leaning back to take a swig from the bottle, he looks up at Katniss.

"So. How's Lover Boy?"

Good god, did Haymitch know exactly what would piss her off most in any situation. In response, she snatched the bottle from his grip and nearly drained the thing before she heard him clearing his throat. She stopped chugging to give him a death glare, trying not to cough at the horrible taste. There was something in his eyes that made her pause, though, and remain stalk-still as if she was back in the arena trying to analyze a fellow tribute before attack.

"I think you better slow down," he said quietly, leaning his elbows onto the table and looking at her through his matted and disarrayed mess of blonde hair.

Concern. It could be concern. But with everything clouding his eyes and her own starting to shimmer, Katniss couldn't focus.

She ignored him, turning away to take another swig from the bottle. But this time it burns just as much, and she comes up coughing.

"I can't do it, Haymitch," she finally chokes out, "I can't be what he needs, and I _want_ to, but I just _can't_, I'm not a good person and he _used_ to be but now I just don't know anymore because they did all of this, and if they could do something so horrible as taking away Peeta, and Prim, and everyone else, it just – " She stopped, her brain finally catching up with her words and telling her she was making a fool of herself in front of this desensitized drunk. Yet there he was, across the table, watching her intently. She had gone though so much in his company; and besides, she was almost done:

"What is there for me to live for, huh?" she demands. "What else is there?"

A sadness seems to enter his posture.

"I've been asking myself the same question for the past twenty years."

"This isn't helping, Haymitch."

He sighs. Looks at the contents swirling in the bottom of his glass.

"Never does," he says. Katniss knows what he's thinking, what's not helping _him_ as he stares into that glass.

"Then how do you do it?" she demands, wanting to get his attention again, just like before her first games. She was beginning to realize what she'd come here for: she needed advice. She needed to know how to stay alive this time. And so she asks, "How did you ever find something to live for when you know there's nothing, _nothing_ that can fix you?"

"I raise geese," he tells the cup.

She glares at him. "Don't make me throw a bottle at you."

It's a while before Haymitch speaks. He just sits a while, tumbler in hand, swirling around the dregs of another day's forgetting.

"I'm guessing you want advice," he drawls. "And look, I may have told you how to win the Games. Helped you, even. We could both handle getting out of there once or twice. But life after it? It's just one giant hellhole. And you can clearly see how well I have _not_ been handling it."

"At least you don't feel things anymore," she mumbles, reaching out for the bottle and pouring herself a glass.

"And enough with the good stuff, huh?" Haymitch pulls the bottle out of her hands and places it on the counter behind him. His face is red and angry, and suddenly Katniss thinks she's offended him in some bigger way than just drinking his liquor. She pretends not to notice.

"It helps you," she spits back defensively. "Why should I be any different?"

He sighs. "Can we just stop with the psychoanalysis for a minute? You rudely woke me up only a handful of minutes ago, sweetheart."

So, back to the hostile facades they kept with one another.

She concedes to staying silent, but picks up her glass, putting her nose to it. "Fine, but I'm still drinking this."

A warmth was starting to spread out in her stomach from the alcohol, and Katniss was finding the sensation not all unpleasant. It felt a little bit like recklessness, a little bit like comfort… and a little bit like life. Maybe Haymitch was onto something with the liquor thing. Because as she's finishing what's left of her cup, she begins to feel something else: A fogginess that begins to creep over her mind. After what seems like mere minutes, she lifts her head with effort to look at Haymitch.

"It's about forgetting, isn't it," she says before letting her head loll onto her shoulder and settling into a deep sleep.

Later that afternoon, as she's dead to the world and still slouching all over that kitchen chair, an only slightly inebriated Haymitch sidles up to the girl, sets his glass on the table, and bends over to heave her into his arms. He tries not to stumble but still feels like he does as he makes his way to the sunken couch in the living room, the couch that Effie always berates him for not replacing but which he refuses to because of the body print he's worked into the thing's seat cushions after passing out on the thing so many nights for so many years. He heaves her onto said couch, then, surveying his work, feels a little bad for just dumping her there, limbs all askew. So he arranges her arms so it's not hanging off the edge of the couch, flips her feet over the sunken armrest and off the end of the couch. Half a thought about a blanket crosses his mind, but he's inebriated enough to not care, nor think of where to find one. His eyes take one more sweep over her, assuring himself that she's not dead of alcohol poisoning, that she's just passed out, sleeping it off, when he notices the hairs. The wispy bits of hair that have somehow made it out of that braid of hers and into her face. He bends over, slowly moving his hand across her forehead to relocate the bastard strands, when she opens her mouth. He pulls back, afraid she's going to hurl all over him, but she just lets out a breath.

Haymitch does too. So he gives his arm a little swing, his fingers grazing her sleeve.

"Night, Sweetheart," he whispers as he makes his way back into the kitchen, to get the forgetting done right this time. She'd said earlier that he had lost the capacity to feel. And right now, more than anything, he wanted to prove her right.


	4. Chapter 4

AN: So I was really happy with the way the last chapter ended as I love a tender Haymitch, but I can't let the broken bits go unmended! I spent some time on this story this week and have this update for you. Shoutout to the readers and reviewers, the stats and reviews keep me hoping you're interested and want to read more, and that drives me to write. Just for you!

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Haymitch snaps awake with a start. He doubles over a split-second later, cringing and wanting to cover his ears, but he rips off his tangled bed sheets and stumbles out of their clutches and into the hallway towards the living room where he left Katniss. Because she's screaming bloody murder, he's practically at a run when he rounds the corner into the room to find her – _sleeping_. And screaming like a banshee. He tries to nudge her awake, a couple sharp jolts to her side, but it's not working and his ears are taking a beating. He knows if she keeps it up he'll be getting a massive hangover headache, but besides that, her screams might wake up the boy next door. And that is the last thing he wants. So he ends up gripping her by the shoulders and physically shaking her awake, calling her name into her face until her eyes snap open and she takes in a sharp, gaspy breath. Then she practically turns to jelly under his grip.

He was on the verge of cussing her out, right up until she did that. But now she looks so beat down, so listless that he rethinks his plan of attack.

"Is this how it is every night, sweetheart?" he asks, hoping his voice is somewhat soft. Not that he ever carries that out very well.

She just looks up at him, guilt shining in her eyes. _Don't hate me; don't leave me here_, they seem to say, and she doesn't need to speak. He understands. So he sits back, shakes his head back and forth slowly, running a hand through his mess of hair.

He looks back down at her, controlling his expression when he says, "I think you better go home."

Because he gets it now. This is why she needs the boy around, why she convinces herself to stay with him even when living the lie wounds her in its own way. He knew it'd been like this after her first Games, but he'd never considered the nightmares sticking around. He guessed everybody had their haunts. God knew he had his.

She shakes her head at the word _home_. "Don't call it that." There is a sadness in her voice, one that makes her sound like an eighty-year-old woman rather than the eighteen-year-old Girl on Fire she's supposed to be. And seeing her like this is really starting to tear him up.

He can't handle these kinds of things, she should know that.

"Then go to your own house," he spits out, not thinking, just reacting, and immediately regretting it. She'd moved into Peeta's after the war because, frankly, the boy had no other family left to fill it with. Haymitch imagined it also had to do with her not being able to sleep down the hall from her dead sister's empty room, a fact that that came at Haymitch especially hard right now. He looked back at her, pleading forgiveness for his last outburst.

Her eyes were watering up.

"Shit, sweetheart, I didn't…" Haymitch harrumphed, running a hand through the hair hanging over his face and palming it down over his sorry features. "Listen," he said, trying again. If you need a place to crash for a couple of days, just to detox or whatever the hell you wanna do, you can stay here. But this screaming thing… Hell, sweetheart, isn't that what Peeta's for?"

And that's when the tears spill over, her eyes turning all puffy and red, and she mops a sleeve over her face to sop it all up. He reaches out an arm to stop her from the mopping, looking at her hard.

"I can't keep him around for me," she sniffles between tears, obviously embarrassed at her leaking eyes but unable to stop them once they'd started. _Damn, she's broken up._ "I'm turning him back into the Peeta from the hijacking, just by being around and – And I'm afraid that I need him too much. But I know I'm using him. Now more than ever. And we're not fooling anyone this time, Haymitch. It's like we're falling apart at the seams, and I need him to stitch me back up, but I'm his seam ripper. It just doesn't work anymore."

Haymitch realizes at the end of the speech just how far removed Katniss is from the old Girl on Fire, the hasty, sometimes thoughtless sixteen-year-old that he'd mentored through her Games. She was different now. She had lived through so much in such a small window, she couldn't be only eighteen. She had suffered so much, and she was still insistent on sacrificing herself for others. He had to commend her, as usual. But Haymitch didn't know what to say to all that. _I'm proud of you, even after all this? You're too young to be this broken up? Chin up, Sweetheart? _No. So instead, he squeezes her forearm – he just notices he's still holding onto it – and mumbles, "Go back to sleep, Mockingjay."

She blinks her eyes heavily before letting herself sink a little further into the couch. She seems to be taking his advice.

"I prefer Sweetheart," she mumbles before dozing off into oblivion.

A little smile threatens to show itself on Haymitch's lips as he watches her doze off, and, after he's content that she's in a place where the nightmares can't get to her, he recedes to his stuffing-spewing easy chair on the other side of the room. This will be his bed for the rest of the night.

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Thoughts? You still interested in updates, yo? Throw stones or give cookies in reviews!


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